Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

But even race-neutral policies and recruitment efforts designed to achieve greater diversity are, in the end, not race neutral.

Whether we kept a certain number of troops there or pulled out completely, if we can't get the Maliki government to include a large segment of its population in its security forces and protection, then the small amount of forces that we would have left there might have slowed this day, but they wouldn't have prevented it altogether.

It was an echo of Director Comey's testimony that Trump showed no curiosity, no interest, no concern over the Russia hack. The only element of it that concerned him was how it might impact him personally. That says, I think, a lot about where the president is coming from, but it was quite jarring given this was an attack on our democracy by a foreign power.

While our country has made great strides in breaking down the barriers which for so long denied equal opportunity to all Americans, we are not yet the beautiful symphony of brotherhood of Dr. King's dream.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, the dream of a beautiful American orchestra goes on, and I share Dr. King's faith that each year we move inexorably closer to a magnificent opening night.

There was certainly merit to the criticism that the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had about how James Comey handled the Hillary Clinton investigation. And I don't think Director Comey ever adequately explained why he treated the Clinton investigation one way and the Trump investigation another.